The Dare

by Lauren Landish

  “I’m just playing. Chill.”

  “Yes, I did talk to him this morning . . . and no, he didn’t ask about you.”

  “Whatever.” Tiffany laughs, knowing not to press my buttons any further on the issue.

  Everything’s good until we get off the freeway and run smack dab into traffic.

  “Ugh!” Tiffany groans as we watch four cars get through the intersection ahead before stopping. “It’s like everyone and their grandma is in the way!”

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. “There’s a garbage truck ahead, you know.”

  “So?” Tiffany asks.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Tiffany grins, pointing to the oncoming lane which is currently empty. “Pop it.”

  I look over at her grinning face, her perfectly white model’s smile tweaked into that little tilt that I know way too well. “Are you nuts? Intersections like this, you know the cops—”

  “Just skip ahead. I dare ya.”

  The words hang in the air, and Tiffany’s grin widens as I turn my attention back to the road, my hand resting on the gear shift. “Fine . . . on the green.”

  Up ahead, the light goes green and I floor it, throwing my Camaro into first while jerking my steering wheel to the left. Adrenaline rushes through me, filling my blood as we rocket through the intersection and beyond. Up ahead, I see the problem—a city sewer repair truck—but I’m committed now.

  “Elle, there’s—” Tiffany yells, but I see it. A flagman, traffic . . . oncoming traffic.

  I push it a little harder, shooting the gap and jerking my wheel back to the right just in time to avoid getting my bumper clipped by a soccer mom in an oversized SUV. “Yes!”

  I don’t let up, making a quick right and then a left a block later to try and not be followed by the cops before I merge back onto the main road and slow down like everything’s normal. “That was fun.” I pat the dashboard of my baby. “Good girl, Cammie.”

  Next to me, Tiffany looks like she’s ready to lose her breakfast, and I’m betting she only had coffee. Wiping the sweat off her brow, she gasps. “Damn, girl. That was close.”

  I grin like I just did something amazing. It really wasn’t even that close. It was definitely a bitch move to make, and those folks had every right to honk at me, but it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Tiffany’s making it out to be.

  Dare done.

  And that adrenalin wears off, leaving me buzzed and fizzy inside, ready to tackle another day.

  Chapter 2

  Elle

  Fox Industries headquarters is one of those rare things in the corporate world, a headquarters that doesn’t look like a headquarters. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Nobody who drives by the five-story, half-mile-long building is going to think it’s just your average business park.

  It’s built into a hillside. On the side that you park on, only the top three floors are visible, each one surrounded by a wide, shaded walkway that you can use to get from one end of the building to the other while getting some fresh air if you want.

  But on the other side . . . well now, that’s where it gets truly impressive. From that side, you see all five floors overlooking a wide, shallow half canyon that opens up into a view of the entire valley below us.

  If you didn’t know better, you’d think the building was a hospital, or maybe a technological college. But for forty years, it’s been the Fox headquarters, and as we walk into the lobby on the ‘ground’ floor, I’m once again glad to work here.

  Just not under Dad.

  Well, technically, I guess I do work for him. Tiffany and I work for everyone in the company. Every executive has their own team, but the business assistants like Tiffany and I get the grunt work.

  Answer the phone? Yep. Give tours? Every day at ten and two if there’s someone here who wants a peek behind the Wizard’s curtain. Make copies, file paperwork, create binders for presentations, act as a courier from one end of the building to the other, and plug numbers into spreadsheets for data analysis? Yes, yes, and yes to all that.

  It’s not exactly what I thought I’d be doing with my business degree, and definitely not what Dad wants me to do. He offered me an unpaid internship as an analyst in his department straight out of school with near assurances that it’d become a permanent job after the twelve weeks. And while the brainwork of that had definitely appealed, I want to earn my positions myself, so we’d compromised that I’d work at Fox in a role where he doesn’t hold any sway. And in a job where I’m not being subsidized by his bank account. I might not make much, but I earn every penny myself and that’s important to me.

  One day, I’ll make my way up the ladder myself and get to use the intelligence I inherited from Dad, but in the meantime, I’m paying my dues and enjoying my work. It’s busy and constant, but I could do it with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back while hopping on one foot.

  Hmm, maybe I’ll dare Tiffany to do that later and see how it works out?

  Unfortunately for Tiffany and me, we’re ten minutes late, and as we come in, we see the current bane of our existences, our boss Miranda, manning the lobby phones, looking like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off. She used to answer the phones and worked her way up herself, but I guess it’s been a while since she was in the trenches.

  She’s perfectly put together, her brown hair frosted just enough to accentuate her maturity while her super-tight-even-after-two-kids body’s tucked into a form fitting mirror of our own business professional outfits.

  I wonder if she’d be a good fit for my dad? Then I remember that her kids are barely teenagers and mark her off the list of potentials. Dad doesn’t need that, and besides, he already knows Miranda, so if there were sparks to be made, he’d have already seen them.

  There’s definitely some sparks right now, though, her eyes blazing behind the lenses of her glasses as she hisses at us, “Where have you two been? You’re late.”

  “Her fault,” Tiffany immediately says, casually hooking a thumb in my direction. “So much traffic and she drives like my Grandma,” Tiffany says before covering her mouth.

  Miranda gives her the stink eye then instructs us, “You two get to work. I’ve got to brief Mr. Wolfe in half an hour and I’m not ready, thank you two very much.”

  Miranda walks off, leaving us to work at the desk alone. Not that we can’t handle it. Most of the job involves coordinating interactions when visitors, delivery people, or outside contractors come in.

  The most common problem we have is explaining to a new visitor that yes, while they are in the lobby and yes, they just walked in the front door, they need to take the down elevator to get to the first floor.

  “Why did they do that, anyway?” Tiffany asks me after escorting a lost coffee delivery guy. I’d dared her to use an accent of her choice and she’d used a pretty good fake Spanish accent for the trip to the elevator. Back in her usual voice with no rolled Rs, she says, “We’ve been working here over two years, and I still don’t know.”

  “Dad told me that some of the people working on the bottom two floors were threatening to strike,” I reply as I check the pile of mail in front of me for proper postage and labels. “They were pissy about working in the so-called ‘basement’ by having negative numbers. So the board renumbered the elevators and repainted the numbers in the stairwell, and the strike threat went away like that.” I snap my fingers to emphasize the point. “People are stupid,” I say with an exasperated sigh, but I get that sometimes, little things like that can be a sign of something deeper, so I don’t begrudge the complainers too much.

  Except when I have to answer the same question for the umpteenth time in one eight-hour shift.

  I turn my mind back to checking the mail, ignoring Tiffany for a bit. While I love my job, it can be boring and monotonous, like checking outgoing mail for stamps and labels. Tiff helps me keep it fun by daring me to do silly things from time to time, like wearin
g a pink sticky note on my butt when I go to get a coffee.

  “Oops, how’d that get there? Thanks!” I tell the lady who whispers to me about it like it’s a gross misstep of proper civility.

  I laugh lightly as I sit back down at my desk. There isn’t much time to do anything too crazy, which is probably for the best. Instead, we answer phones and take questions and operate as information central for pretty much the entire building.

  Just after lunch, I see a large group of suits walk in, talking animatedly among themselves. Nothing unusual about that, either the suits or the talk. Fox is so successful because it doesn’t treat their workers like robotic morons, and a lot of the workers are passionate about their jobs.

  There’s one suit, though, who lags behind the rest, and Tiff jostles my elbow as she notices who it is. “Oh, shit.”

  My eyes follow hers and I see him. Miranda’s boss. I guess technically, my boss too, since he oversees internal operations.

  It’s The Big, Bad Wolfe.

  Colton Wolfe.

  Tall, dark-haired, and handsome . . . with the sexiest British accent I’ve ever heard. He’s the poster boy for the new generation of Fox executives, the man who’s got it all. Brains, guts, and he’s sexy enough to make even a double-breasted gabardine suit look good.

  He never says anything when he comes through the lobby. He doesn’t even look at me, though I’ve tried I don’t know how many times to get his attention.

  Including offering him a good morning coffee, faking a sneezing fit, and once, dropping a folder right in front of him and bending down to retrieve it. All dares from Tiffany, of course.

  I gave up after the last one, where he literally walked around my swaying ass without so much as a glance.

  To say he’s handsome is an understatement. And the fact that I work in a department that he oversees . . . that I work under him . . . yeah, I’ve had a few fantasies with that phrase having a whole different meaning.

  But he’s never said a word to me. Two plus years with the company, if you count summer internships, and the most he’s done is give a little two-minute welcome speech at a new hires meeting my first day on the job.

  “I dare you . . . to go talk to him.”

  I turn to Tiffany, who’s grinning as she looks at me. I guess I can’t blame her. I give her so much shit about her crush on my dad, so she can’t be blamed for trying to get me on my DL crush on Colton. “Tiff, we’ve talked about this. Remember the ass-waving incident? He’s a no-go.”

  “I’m serious,” she says, still grinning like she’s just this side of the nuthouse. “You’ve been checking him out since you first laid eyes on him, and he just hasn’t seen you yet. Here’s your chance. If he acknowledges you and then moves on, you’ll know for sure. But until then, it’s just no guts, no glory on your part.”

  “Tiff,” I plead, knowing she’s dared me and how hard it is to turn a dare down, “he’s our boss. Or Miranda’s boss, which means if I make an ass of myself, she’s going to chew it right off before the end of the day. And this is bordering dangerously close to rule number two—no sex dares.”

  Tiffany isn’t swayed, though, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not daring you to fuck him over the desk. I’m merely strongly suggesting that you talk to the man. Face to face, eye to eye. I double dare you to go tell Colton Wolfe your name and that you think he’s sex in a suit.”

  A double dare. Fuck. I can’t. I can’t. It’s stupid, though her words paint a rather sexy picture of the two of us. Still . . .

  He walks by, my heart pounding, and before I know it, my mouth’s open. “Good morning, Mr. Wolfe! Nice suit!”

  I try to keep my voice casual, not giving in to Tiff’s suggested words because I’m a daredevil, but I’m also not looking to get fired for sexual harassment by telling him the filthy thoughts really running through my mind when I see him.

  See? I have boundaries. They’re just really far and wide.

  My cheeks are burning and my gut’s churning. I expect him to turn and look at me. To say something, anything.

  But he just grunts and keeps on his way as if I don’t even exist.

  “Seriously?” Tiffany asks as Colton disappears into the executive elevator. “Nice suit? I am so disappointed in you.”

  Okay, so maybe that dare doesn’t count as done. But even in the failure, my heart’s soaring and I get that fizzy feeling, so it’s not a total loss.

  “There he goes again.”

  I don’t even say anything, knowing Tiffany’s going to get me in trouble if I even acknowledge her.

  She’s already dared me to eat a double chocolate orgasm donut from the shop next to Starbucks this morning. Well, that wasn’t the dare, exactly. It was more to fake the orgasm the donut incited, right there, When Harry Met Sally style in the donut store.

  Dare done.

  Embarrassingly so, and with giggles, but done. And the donut was really good, so I’d tipped the smiling lady at the counter an extra couple of bucks for putting up with our craziness as I bought a dozen to share with the people at work. Billy and Ricky had eaten three each, and Dad had declined with a pat of his flat belly. Even Miranda had eaten one with a groan of thanks.

  But even as I know I should ignore Tiff, I look up and see Colton crossing the lobby with a couple of the other high up executives in the company.

  I know their names, have probably had dinner with them at some point when I was younger. But much as they now overlook me as ‘the help’, I can’t tell you more than their names and positions on the organizational chart. I curse my younger, clueless self for not taking better mental notes of who liked opera, who preferred chardonnay over whiskey, and what role everyone who sat at Dad’s table played at Fox. I can almost hear Dad whispering about the ‘wasted opportunity’, but I shush him with a blink.

  Because mostly, my eyes are focused on Colton.

  Today’s suit is even sexier than yesterday’s, in my opinion, the navy-blue matching well with the deep blue of his eyes, and I swallow despite myself.

  And it’s been that way for years, ever since I started at Fox. Just when I think my poor ego and libido can’t take another upgrade to my fantasies, he takes it up another few notches.

  Still, he’s never even looked my way. “Yeah.”

  “Think he’ll say something to you today?” Tiffany asks me, hope springing eternal. “I mean, after being such a big, throbbing dick and ignoring you?”

  And now I’m thinking about throbbing dicks and reminding myself that I decided I needed a lay with an actual heartbeat.

  Colton’s got a heartbeat. I bet he’s got a big, pounding . . . heartbeat.

  “Ms. Carter?” a decidedly British voice says. Honey over ice is what he sounds like, I decide dreamily before realizing he actually spoke. Though it’s not to me, unfortunately.

  Tiffany and I look up in shock, realizing Colton’s stopped right in front of our desk. Miranda, who’s been looking through the visitor sign-in log, looks up in surprise. “Yes, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “A moment, please,” he says, leading Miranda over to a cutout near the elevators. He pushes the button, letting her know this will be a quick conversation, and then begins questioning her fiercely. Even though he’s trying to follow the classic leadership rule of praise in public, chew ass in private, a trick of the lobby’s acoustics brings his voice to us.

  “What was the purpose of sending that outbound shipping report to my office?” Colton asks, all honey gone and pure ice in his tone. “What would I care how many packages are sent out?”

  I remember that report. I took it upstairs myself . . . on Miranda’s orders.

  “You said that you wanted an overview of the shipping practices, sir, during our last meeting, and—”

  “And what you sent was a load of spreadsheets and figures,” Colton growls. “I don’t need data to analyze myself. I expected you to do the analysis and send a single-page summary as we discussed. I need bottom-line figures of shipping ex
penses by department, and if you can conceive of a way to cut costs, please feel free to include that in your breakdown.”

  “I . . . I apologize, sir,” Miranda says. “I thought—”

  “By the end of the day, Ms. Carter.”

  The elevator dings and opens, and Colton disappears inside, leaving Miranda standing there with her head bowed.

  As the doors close, I see that Colton already has his nose buried in his phone once again. Miranda turns around, her face tight with anger and maybe a little embarrassment from her fresh ass reaming.

  “Are you two still wasting time?”

  Her question catches me by surprise. After all, I was just the delivery girl, not the report writer. But she’s lashing out at the closest targets . . . us.

  I stand, stumbling as my left high heel slips on the carpet and my ass bumps against the long desk Tiffany and I share, but I hold on to the stack of papers in my hands. “Miranda, I was just taking these—”

  Miranda has zero interest in listening. “Girls, the FedEx man will be here soon. You keep him waiting, and I’ll show you what Fed Up means.”

  She walks off, and behind her back, Tiffany scowls at her before rearranging her face into her usual professional soft smile. “At least he stopped by and spoke. He had to have seen you this time. He was right in front of you!”

  “Well, if he did, he was unimpressed. No professing his undying love and questioning where I’ve been his whole life.” I throw my forearm up to my brow like I’m a Victorian-era debutante about to faint. “Poor me, whatever shall I do?”

  Tiffany’s eyes get wide, and I know she’s already coming up with ideas.

  “Rhetorical question, little missy.” I point a finger at her and then the stack of boxes visible through the open door of the mailroom. “Get to work or I’ll give you a dare with Arnold.” The threat holds weight because our FedEx driver is downright mean and always in a hurry. We learned to never delay him the hard way when he left our packages over a long holiday weekend without a second thought, even though our pickup time was still thirty minutes away. After that fiasco, we started calling him Arnold the Asshole.